Efficient responses to climate change require accurate estimates of both aggregate damages and where and to whom they occur. While specific case studies and simulations have suggested that climate change disproportionately affects the poor, large-scale direct evidence of the magnitude and origins of this disparity is lacking. Similarly, evidence on aggregate damages, which is a […]

Using a dataset of 15 million UK job adverts from a recruitment website, we construct new economic statistics measuring labour market demand. These data are ‘naturally occurring’, having originally been posted online by firms. They offer information on two dimensions of vacancies—region and occupation—that firm-based surveys do not usually, and cannot easily, collect. These data […]

Barber and Odean study the relationship between trading activity and returns. They find that households who trade more have a lower net return than other households. They argue that these results cannot emerge from a model with rational traders and instead attribute these findings to overconfidence. In contrast, we find that household financial choices generated […]

Chinese local governments wield their enormous political power and administrative capacity to provide “special deals” for favored private firms. We argue that China’s extraordinary economic growth comes from these special deals. Local political leaders do so because they derive personal benefits, either political or monetary, from providing special deals. Competition between local governments limits the […]

We introduce a computationally tractable dynamic equilibrium model of the automobile market where new and used cars of multiple types (e.g. makes/models) are traded by heterogeneous consumers. Prices and quantities are determined endogenously to equate supply and demand for all car types and vintages, along with the ages at which cars are scrapped. The model […]

Where 0.8 percent US’ Inflation came from?

The Consumer Price Index increased 0.8 percent from December 2013 through December 2014, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on January 16th 2015. This small increase represents the second-smallest December-December increase since 1965. Energy prices in general dragged the average down with a sharp drop in Gasoline prices of about -21 percent change over the year, though Energy in general increased a little more than 10 percent. Indexes for both Food and Rent rose 3.4 percent during 2014. The Consumer Price Index is a measure of the average change in prices of goods and services purchased on a daily basis by US households. Prices are collected monthly in 87 urban areas from roughly 26,000 retail stores and 4,000 housing units. The US Federal Reserve Bank aims at a 2 percent increase in the Consumer Price Index.

Although Consumer Price Index is a good statistical measure, its own aggregation as an average may lead to wrong conclusions. A more detailed approach on price changes can be done by looking at each good’s and service’s average price change. The graph below shows average price changes for the major 30 goods and services, which were selected by their weight relevance in the CPI calculation (higher than 1.0). These are the goods and services that matter the most for a day-to-day household tracking expenses.

As the graph shows the biggest drop in prices were on energy related goods and services. Gasoline prices dropped roughly -21 percent through the year. Wireless telephone services also decreased its price by -4 percent approximately. Women’s and girl’s apparel fell -3.6 percent along 2014, whereas Apparel in general did so by -2 percent. Read the entire BLS’ report.

On the other hand, the index that increased the most during 2014 was the one related to protein food. Meats, poultry, fish and eggs increased their prices by 9.2 percent nearly, whereas Food in general increased 3.4 percent. Prescription drugs were up 6.4 percent. Rent of primary residencies were augmented by 3.4 percent.

An even more detailed information about Price changes by goods and services can be found in the list below. The list is organized by alphabetical order: